Thanks to Immunotherapies, the Outlook for Patients with RCC is Changing

An expert discusses the evolving treatments for renal cell carcinoma (RCC) over the last decade, as well as the future role of immunotherapies for patients with RCC.

BY Mario Snozl, M.D.

PUBLISHED March 25, 2019

With immunotherapies moving into the frontline setting for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC), the treatment landscape has changed drastically over the last 15 years. Thanks to new treatments such as the combination of PD-1 inhibitors and VEGF TKIs, the prognosis for RCC has improved. However, researchers are not entirely sure what the next steps should be, said Mario Sznol, M.D., professor of medicine and co-director of the Cancer Immunology Program and the Yale SPORE in Skin Cancer at Yale Cancer Center.

“For any individual patient who comes into the clinic, their overall prognosis is much better than it would have been 10 or 15 years ago,” said Snozl. “We have two clear, very active approaches that we can use in almost every patient.”

At the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, OncLive, a sister publication of CURE®, sat down with Snozl to discuss how has the outlook changed for patients with RCC.